Three weeks ago, GOP gubernatorial candidate Scott McInnis, his wife and two aides stood in my office laughing and talking about the rigors of a long campaign.

A week later, McInnis was fighting for his political life after this newspaper reported that portions of research papers he was paid to write were plagiarized.

In a political season, things can change quickly. There are times politicians are at the newspaper seeking an endorsement or just to make connections with the people writing about them. We embrace these encounters, for the better we know the candidates, the more authoritatively we can report on them. We’re not friends and we’re not enemies. We both have jobs to do and we need each other to do them well.

But a good newspaper never forgets that its job is to report on powerful people and institutions without fear or favor.

Since we first reported the story of McInnis’ plagiarism, some of his supporters have questioned the stories, the timing of their publication, and what they perceive as a lack of similar investigative reporting about his competitors, Republican Dan Maes and Democrat John Hickenlooper.

We are not out to get McInnis or anyone else. We have a half-dozen reporters dedicated to covering the candidates for statewide office. The candidates are asked to provide some information about themselves that would not otherwise be available to the public, including tax returns, medical records, college transcripts, and summaries of their investment portfolios. Most willingly disclose this information because they understand that voters have an interest in knowing more about their government officials.

In addition, the reporters research available public records, including property ownership, corporate relationships, financial disclosures, and, where applicable, performance in public office.

In the case of McInnis and Maes, only McInnis has previously held elected office. His public record is far more voluminous than is Maes’, which has resulted in more news about McInnis. Yet we are devoting just as much reporting effort to Maes.

As for Hickenlooper, he has no primary, so we have not focused on him as much — yet. But he will get plenty of scrutiny as we approach the general election.

We don’t care who wins the race for governor. Believe it or not, we in the newsroom don’t coordinate with the editorial page, which has called on McInnis to withdraw from the primary.

The press is often the whipping boy for conspiracy theorists and is portrayed as being against Republicans. Those critics conveniently ignore history. Ask former Democratic Mayor Wellington Webb if he thought the press, and The Post in particular, showed him favoritism. Or recall that just four years ago, during the last race for governor, The Denver Post first reported about an illegal immigrant named Walter Ramo who had been given a deal by the office of Denver District Attorney Bill Ritter. That deal likely helped Ramo (among others) avoid deportation.

We have followed that story throughout Ritter’s tenure as governor. As he prepares to leave office, we remain in a court fight with his administration in an effort to gain access to phone records we think would shed further light on that story.

Ritter is a Democrat. The reporter who wrote about Ramo is the same one who broke the news of McInnis’ plagiarism.

Our motivation for doing hard-hitting journalism is not to set an agenda. It is to make the powerful accountable. We believe in letting the chips fall where they may.

This is an extraordinary political season, featuring an open seat for governor and a donnybrook for the U.S. Senate seat to which former Denver schools superintendent Michael Bennet was appointed. I suspect there will be bellyaching from all of the campaigns at some point. That’s also the nature of the political season.

Finally, there has been some criticism about the story we published on July 14 that raised the possibility of plagiarism in an op-ed McInnis wrote for the Rocky Mountain News in 1994, a piece that had words and phrases similar to one previously published in The Washington Post.

The McInnis campaign was made aware of our discovery as soon as we knew about it. They were given hours to respond. They first asked that we not publish the story for a day. We declined, and asked for a substantive response. They were also told they could call me directly. They did not.

We also tried to reach the authors of The Washington Post op-ed for a reaction, but could not find them until the next morning. When we did, one of them blasted our paper for the story, saying he had conferred with McInnis on the topic and gave his permission for the candidate to use his words and phrasing.

If we had reached that author earlier, we would have included his explanation, but we still would have run the story with experts debating whether, even with permission, the ethical thing to do is credit other people for their words, especially when they have already been published elsewhere.

In the end, it is up to you to make up your minds about the candidates based on information gleaned from this newspaper and other sources. We put that information together as fairly as we know how, with a premium placed on documentation and public records.

The critical reporting on McInnis has been tough, no doubt. It also has been fair. We intend to keep delivering that kind of journalism — and we’re happy to take the flak for doing it.